This invention relates to the handling and transport of cargo and freight by means such as containers or truck trailers.
A great deal of progress has been achieved in freight handling and transport through improved methods of shipping and packaging cargo and freight. These methods include containerization of cargo and improved truck trailer handling procedures which have speeded up the transport of freight.
However, even with the advances which have been made in this field there still exists a bottleneck in the flow of freight at the loading and unloading stages. The loading and unloading procedures for many types of cargo is extremely slow. The result is that the equipment is tied up and valuable transit time is lost because of the time required for loading or unloading the containers or trailers.
In containerized cargo procedures such as where a container is loaded with cargo and the container is then loaded on the transport vehicle, such as a ship, quick turn-around-time is essential in view of high shipping costs. However, containers of the foregoing nature are in short supply so that there is a great need for decreasing the turn-around-time of the equipment to reduce lost time and increase equipment utilization. Presently the trailers and containers are inefficiently utilized and waste a great deal of money where they may be idle for as long as a number of days to be loaded or unloaded.
The foregoing problem is compounded where the containers and trailers may be forced on shippers or receivers when not convenient to their loading or unloading schedules. A greater expense is thus incurred because odd hours of loading are required and slow cargo handling methods must be employed.